Munch’s Mad Walk Provoked $80 Million ‘Scream’

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch, one of four versions of the composition by the Norwegian artist, went on display at MoMA after selling for a record price. Source: Sotheby's via Bloomberg

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- “I walked along the road with two
friends,” wrote Edvard Munch. “Suddenly the sky became blood …
I heard a huge extraordinary scream pass through nature.”

One of Munch’s visualizations of that sound will be
auctioned tomorrow by Sotheby’s New York, where it’s predicted
to fetch $80 million or more.

His “The Scream” is one of the most famous images in the
world. You could argue that it’s too famous for its own good.
Like the Mona Lisa, the picture’s so familiar that it’s
virtually impossible to respond to it freshly.

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that both Da Vinci’s
masterpiece and Munch’s have been the subject of sensational
thefts. Indeed, two different versions of “The Scream” have
been stolen from separate museums in Oslo on different occasions
(one from the Norwegian National Gallery in 1994 and another
from the Munch Museum in 2004, both eventually recovered).

“The Scream” has been parodied and appropriated in a
multiplicity of ways, including an Andy Warhol silkscreen, a
Gary Larson cartoon featuring a shrieking dachshund and an
advertisement for chocolates. Of these, perhaps Homer Simpson’s
Scream is the most preposterously memorable. Munch himself
produced it in five different forms: two paintings, two pastels
(one of which is the work to be auctioned) and a lithograph.

Simple Power

The result of all this proliferation is that one can hardly
see the Scream for the jokes. Its original power lies partly in
its simplicity: All of Munch’s versions -- though differing
slightly in media, color and composition -- are so pared down as
almost to be cartoons themselves. The image is compelling visual
shorthand for a feeling experienced by virtually everyone at one
time or another: frantic anxiety and desperation.

There is piquancy in the fact that a large portion of the
world’s most celebrated art was made by two young men on the
verge of mental collapse in the late 19th century. The life of
Munch (1863-1944) ran parallel for a while with that of Van Gogh
(1853-1890). Artistically, they were almost exact
contemporaries.

Van Gogh was a decade older, but he was a late starter.
Both he and Munch started out as artists around 1880, and each
suffered mental crises later on. Out of that extremity came
“Starry Night,” “Sunflowers” and “The Scream.” The
sexless, schematic figure in Munch’s picture -- hearing, not
emitting the shriek -- is perhaps the artist himself, as that
text suggests. His drawings and paintings, decades later, of his
balding octogenarian self have a similar, though less anguished,
look.

Mingled Cries

“The Scream” is obviously autobiographical. Indeed,
almost reportage. There were reports of agonizing sound in the
district of Oslo where Munch heard the scream. Munch’s sister
Laura was incarcerated in a mental hospital nearby. The cries of
the patients there were said to mingle horribly with the noise
of animals being slaughtered in a nearby abattoir.

Munch survived his breakdowns, Van Gogh didn’t. There’s
another difference. Few would dispute that Van Gogh was one of
the greatest artists who ever lived, while Munch’s reputation
isn’t so clearly established. Some would argue -- I am not one
of them -- that he is overrated. His later work, much of which
is in the Munch Museum, is little known and under-appreciated.

He produced several works as strong as “The Scream,” and
many more substantial than the third version of it that’s going
under the hammer. The pastel probably will sell for a vast
price, yet it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that whoever gets it
will be buying not so much a small drawing, but fame itself.

(Martin Gayford is chief art critic for Muse, the arts and
lifestyle section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are
his own.)